"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a Sunday afternoon."

 "Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality."

 "Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him."

 "Like all religions, the Holy Religion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both Logic and Faith. We have Faith that She is Pink; we Logically know that She is Invisible, because we can't see Her."

 "Although it is said that faith can move mountains, experience shows that dynamite works better."

 "If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?"

"Christianity is an appeal to selfishness. It is a promise of a great reward in the future which is bought with faith, obedience, time, effort, and money in the present."

"Christians believe that the most wonderful thing that can happen to them is to go to Heaven, but few of them are in a hurry to make the trip."

"The pig is taught by sermons and epistles to think that God has snout and bristles."

 "I am treated as evil by those who feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force me to believe as they do."

The scientist yearns to find and eventually know the truth;
The religious man wants the truth to fit his preconceived mold. So, as a result...
The scientist alters his perception to conform to the facts;
The religious man tries to change the facts to conform to his beliefs.

 -- Sources unknown

"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible."
-- George W. Foote

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
-- Charles Darwin,

"To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own."
-- Lionel Strachey (1864-1927) British writer, translator, humorist

"If God made us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment."
-- Voltaire (1694-1778), French philosopher, historian, author, poet

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."
-- Dan Barker Former evangelist, author, critic

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."
-- George Bernard Shaw British dramatist, novelist, critic social reformer and wit

"The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards."
-- Charles Smith (1887-1964) U.S. attorney, author

"It was, after all, Christianity itself which tutored the Western mind to believe that it should know the truth and the truth would make it free. But now that the student has learned to prize the truth, he has discovered, with pain both to himself and his teacher, that it can only be gained at the cost of rejecting the one who first instilled in him the love of it."
-- Van A. Harvey

"Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme."
-- Bernard Katz

"The theory that you should always treat the religious convictions of other people with respect finds no support in the Gospels."
-- Arnold Lunn (1888-1974), British author

An interviewer asked Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's wife), "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?"
She responded,
"He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know."

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?"

"When you make the finding yourself--even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light--you never forget it."

"Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works."

 "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

 -- Carl Sagan (most from "The Demon-Haunted World")

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false,
and by rulers as useful."
-- Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)

"The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it."
-- George Santayana

"I believe in treating others as I want to be treated--but I certainly don't believe in turning the other cheek and the truth is that I never knew any Christians who did either."
-- James Hervey Johnson

"Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?"
-- Epicurus

"I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock."
-- Howard Stern

"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."
-- Michel E. de Montaigne

"Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent--slimy, sneaking and abominable."
-- H. L. Mencken

"As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) U.S. essayist, poet